Spineless Wonders
Richard Conniff
222 pages, including index
published in 1996

Spineless Wonders is a collection of essays about invertebrates: insects, squid, slime eels and such. As such, it is a book that looks at some quite familiar animals in a somewhat different light. It also looks at some fairly strange animals. Actually, the two overlap quite a bit...

Richard Conniff is a new writer to me; from the acknowledgments I gather he was a writer for various American popular science magazines. He also worked for National Geographic television. His writing style in Spineless Wonders is clear and fun to read, with even a hint of humour every now and again. He is also unafraid to appeal to more prurient interests and admits this, rather than pretending to write purely in the cause of Noble Science. After all, part of the appeal of reading about spiders, beetles, squid and assorted other creepy crawlies is the frisson of horror and weirdness they can evoke. Conniff has little new to say for those who are actively interested in the invertebrates he writes about, but he certainly manages to entertain, if not inform. I like that in a nature writer.

Spineless Wonders ranges far and wide. Spiders, leeches, fleas, squid, fire ants, dragon flies, beetles and slime eels all make an appearance, amongst others. What he does with them is not so much writing a treatise on what these are like. Instead he finds his hook in the people who are fascinated by them, or the way in which these animals impact on humans. This keeps the book fresh and avoids the fatigue that can creep upon even the most fascinating natural history book after the n-th essay describing some weird or wonderful species.

In conclusion, this is an entertaining if somewhat slight look at some of nature's weirder creatures. A book you'd sooner get from the library than buy yourself, but certainly worth reading.